Get More Benefits of Professional Community: Crowdsource

To get everything you want from your professional life, it helps to look beyond your job. Not many employers will satisfy all your desires for being on a track to promotion, having stimulating work and colleagues, and doing work that makes the world better. Government workers might have approached that in the heyday of the civil service, but not in our day of budget crises, contracting out, and the proliferation of political appointees.

Professional community can provide opportunities that are missing from your job. You’re using GovLoop because you already appreciate the benefits of professional community:

• You learn from colleagues.
• You build reputation and personal connections that help your career.
• You get to show off your skills.
• You help make public service more effective, which makes the world a better place.
• It’s fun to connect with colleagues who are interested in the same things you are.

You have an opportunity now to get more of these benefits, by being part of crowdsourcing in the public administration community. ASPA NCAC is creating the public administration version of a hackathon, called Public Administration SolveAthon. This will be for all public administrators, not just software developers. A project at SolveAthon might be a more efficient way to organize a business process, or a more insightful analysis of existing data, or a more effective control against waste, fraud and abuse.

And that’s where the crowdsourcing comes in–we want your examples of what a small team of public administrators might produce during one intense weekend. The example could be something that was actually done at a hackathon, or just something that could be done. We will use your examples to explain SolveAthon to potential participants, partners and sponsors. This crowdsourcing lets you be part of creating Public Administration SolveAthon. We will post some of the examples on the SolveAthon web site, and if we judge yours the best, you will be named Honorary Grand Marshal of SolveAthon. To see some examples we already have, and how to submit your own example, see the Public Administration SolveAthon web site at http://wp.me/p2zyPT-M .